Links for Thursday August 30^th, 2012

• Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital: Long, fantastic article from Matt Taibbi on Mitt Romney:

  "By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies... That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt... If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House. "

  The whole thing is worth a read, but if you do read this and still want to vote for Romney, well, I can't help you.

• The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney: In a nut, Romney saved Bain Capital's parent company by screwing over the FDIC:

  Under normal circumstances, such ample reserves would have made liquidating Bain an attractive option: Creditors could simply divvy up the stockpiled cash and be done with the troubled firm. But Bain had inserted a poison pill in its loan agreement with the banks: Instead of being required to use its cash to pay back the firm's creditors, the money could be pocketed by Bain executives in the form of fat bonuses – starting with VPs making $200,000 and up. "The company can deplete its cash balances by making officer-bonus payments," the FDIC lamented, "and still be in compliance with the loan documents."

  Classy.

• Putting a GeForce GTX 670 in a Mac Pro: I've been idly pondering upgrading the graphics card in my Mac Pro (because I do play the occasional game), but it sounds like there isn't a big jump in performance to do so (likely due to immature drivers in Mac OS X). Bummer.